Geek of the Week: Justin Dearborn

It’s our favorite part of the week – Geek of the Week! We saw another action packed week for the cloud industry on a whole. So many nominees to choose from. So little time to make a decision. Moreover, the quantity and quality of nominee submissions we have received makes this column all the more difficult. But, we love the challenge…so bring it on!
That said, without further ado, allow us to present this week’s Geek of the Week winner: Justin Dearborn of Merge Healthcare.
With so many acquisitions going on over the past year and change in the cloud sector, we wouldn’t be surprised if you told us that you didn’t hear about Merge Healthcare’s acquisition by IBM this week…for a staggering $1 billion! Though, we did cover the story. The move to buy Merge was spurred by IBM’s initiative to become deeply entrenched within the healthcare IT industry. This essentially gives IBM’s Watson medical imaging capabilities. As of now, Watson is a numbers crunching supercomputer that can be used as a cloud service. By acquiring Merge Healthcare, IBM’s Watson will be able to look at medical diagnostic images and gather data. Once that data is gathered, new images will be compared to a database of others which will help doctors determine a diagnosis. Watson could also use statistics gathered from its new imaging capabilities that help doctors give patients advice in case an abnormality is discovered.
As CEO (since 2010) Justin has played an integral part in the company’s overall success. Together with Michael Klozotsky, VP of Corporate Marketing at Merge Healthcare, they were able to guide the company to success and ultimately – this mammoth deal.
As for Justin: Before joining Merge Healthcare, Mr. Dearborn served as Managing Director and General Counsel at Merrick Ventures, LLC. Prior to his roles at Merrick Ventures, Mr. Dearborn served in various executive senior management positions for Click Commerce, Inc., a publicly-traded software and services company. Mr. Dearborn was appointed Corporate Secretary of Click Commerce in May, 2003. Prior to Click Commerce, Mr. Dearborn worked at Motorola, Inc. where he specialized in intellectual property transactions and held management positions in Motorola’s Semiconductor and Government Groups.
Congratulations Justin!